One Man's Death

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As I wrote here when Charles Manson died less than two months ago, I get no joy from hearing that another human being has passed away, even one who caused great pain and suffering.

That, essentially, is how I received the news yesterday that Edgar Ray Killen, the mastermind in the conspiracy to murder three young civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964, died in prison a few days shy of his 93rd birthday.

By modern standards, plotting to murder three people usually merits little attention outside the community where such an act occurs.

But the '64 murders were different. Everyone from the president on down was watching developments in Mississippi. A priority was given to finding the missing civil rights workers; then, when their bodies were discovered, the emphasis shifted to bringing their killer(s) to justice.

Killen, an organizer for the Ku Klux Klan, was not present when the workers were abducted and murdered, but he was the one who coordinated everything — then made sure he had an alibi.

Homicide is usually a state charge, and juries in the South of the 1960s tended to be all white — and to acquit white defendants in the slayings of blacks. It was believed the only way a conviction could be obtained was through the federal judicial system, and Killen was among 18 men who, in 1967, faced federal charges of violating the civil rights of the three young men.

Seven of the defendants were convicted and sentenced to from three to 10 years in prison, but the jury couldn't agree on Killen. Eleven voted for conviction, but one refused, saying she did not believe a man of God could participate in something like that.

Killen was a part–time Baptist preacher.

He was convicted of participating in the murders in 2005, 41 years to the day after the triple slaying that inspired the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning," and spent the rest of his life in prison. But he was convicted of manslaughter. So much time had passed since the murders that many witnesses had died, and the jury did not have enough evidence for a homicide conviction. Still three consecutive 20–year sentences were likely to be more than the 80–year–old Killen could survive.

And, indeed, he did not.

Since Killen's death, the only things I have seen written about him were news accounts of his demise. I have seen no columns, no editorials, no commentaries of any kind about him or the era in which he lived — and that he influenced.

I'm not sure what to make of that because I certainly expected to see something, particularly in a polarized time like this. It was only a few months ago, after all, that statues of Confederate soldiers were being brought down from coast to coast — and the Confederacy ceased to exist more than half a century before Killen's birth.

Killen was from the 20th century, about the same age as a fellow who lived down the road from me in central Arkansas. He wasn't, as far as I know, a member of the Klan, but he was a segregationist and an unsuccessful candidate for first governor and then U.S. senator when I was in elementary school.

Well, that was what the public saw. I saw a man who was kind and treated me like a member of the family. In fact, I spent many of my waking hours outside of school at his house, playing with his twin sons.

When he committed suicide eight years ago, I was stunned by the hateful comments I saw on social media sites where folks from my home state tend to congregate.

It was probably because of that experience that I anticipated an equally rabid reaction to Killen's death. Once again, I am stunned — but happily so.

I am inclined to think that maybe that is a good thing. Maybe the fact that a notorious Klansman like Edgar Ray Killen can die in prison and cause barely a ripple is a sign of a maturing society.

That is a welcome development when words like racist, sexist and Nazi are thrown around almost casually.

It is important, once in awhile at least, to be reminded of what those words really mean — and for whom the label is appropriate.

Fifty Years Since the Freedom Summer Murders

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"Mississippi seems almost too small a state to torment the conscience of the nation so deeply. Two little communities live there, entirely separated, hating and fearing each other in a condition of total lawlessness and immorality. ... [F]or three centuries, they have had only animal relations with each other, and all politics, all decision, is magnetized by the primordial fact of race hatred."

Theodore H. White
"The Making of the President 1964"

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In 1964, Ole Miss history professor James Silver labeled Mississippi the "closed society," and, as historian William Manchester observed, "it became clear as the 1960s progressed that an astonishing number of its people, white and black, were actually unaware of the civil rights movement. There were no attacks on the freedom riders there because the state police did not allow them the freedom of movement necessary to be mobbed."

As hard as it may be for most 21st–century people, even those living in Mississippi, to understand, Mississippi seemed to exist under a huge bubble in those days. If they weren't aware of the civil rights movement before, though, Mississippians started to become aware of it 50 years ago tomorrow.

It was on that day in 1964 that three civil rights activists — two Northern white men and a Mississippi black man — went missing in Neshoba County, Miss. After training in Ohio for what was being called "Freedom Summer" — and being given explicit instructions for what to do if they encountered any local resistance — more than 200 volunteers departed for the South on June 19 and arrived on June 21.

"Almost immediately," wrote Manchester, "three of them were reported missing."

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In hindsight, the scenarios that were suggested while the three were officially missing — their bodies were found about six weeks after their disappearance — may seem outlandish, but, at the time, they probably seemed thoroughly plausible to white Southerners who were openly fearful of intervention by "outside agitators."

While the search went on, as lakes and rivers were being dragged and helicopters were doing aerial reconnaissance, rumors were spread that the three had actually gone to Cuba or Chicago, where they were laughing at all the fuss their "disappearance" had caused.

If only that had been true.

In reality, what had happened was that the three were taken into custody that afternoon for allegedly speeding. They were held for about six hours while the execution squad was assembled, then they were released after reportedly paying a fine. They were never seen alive again.

Here is what happened, according to the story that emerged after their bodies were found.

Shortly after their release, the men were stopped by the execution squad. They were taken to a remote location and shot at point–blank range; the black man was savagely beaten before he was shot. Their bodies were buried near the base of a dam and not found for weeks; their car was burned and left on an abandoned logging road. It was found the day after the three disappeared.

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In the early weeks of the search for the three missing civil rights workers, the prevailing opinion among white Mississippians, Manchester wrote, was that the searchers "had no expectation of finding the youths. They were there ... to win Negro votes for President Johnson" in his campaign against Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater.

(That wouldn't help in Mississippi. Comparatively few blacks voted in Mississippi in those days — but, since Mississippi gave Goldwater more than 87% of its vote, Johnson probably didn't expect to carry Mississippi, anyway.)

Eventually the searchers did find the bodies after the case had drawn national attention. In the account of the killings that emerged, the deputy sheriff addressed the men after the bodies were buried. "You've struck a blow for the white man," he said. "Mississippi can be proud of you." Then he warned them all to remain silent — or risk certain death.

Three years later, the case led to the conviction in federal court of seven members of the execution squad for depriving the men of their rights.

It was the first successful prosecution of a civil rights case in Mississippi.

If you're one of the so–called "millennials," that might not seem so special. But let's put it into some perspective.

When America was founded, the Founding Fathers wanted the states to have most of the say over how things were done within their state boundaries. Thus, most criminal charges, like homicide and theft, were — and still are — state charges. The federal courts get involved only when an alleged crime involves a federal law or cases reach the federal level in the appeals process.

These murders were committed at a time when juries in Mississippi — and most of the South, for that matter — routinely acquitted white defendants charged with killing blacks.

Federal authorities knew this so they used the strategy of prosecuting in federal court with the strongest charge in their arsenal — depriving the victims of their civil rights.

Compared to depriving someone of life, that may not seem like much, but it was that or nothing. Prosecutors operated on the belief that something was better than nothing.

Remembering the Past

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Today is the 45th anniversary of something that has to be considered a crucial event in the evolution of race relations in America, yet it seems to be mentioned so infrequently that I would not be surprised if today's young people find it hard to believe that it actually happened.

I'm talking about the murders of three civil rights workers — Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner — in Neshoba County, Miss., on June 21, 1964.

It was, to be sure, a different time. It was a time when the word "Negro" was used by liberals in reference to their black countrymen. "Colored" was still used by folks in a certain age group, and "black" didn't gain popularity for several years. It would have been unthinkable, in those days, to use the phrase "African–American."

Actually, it seems that, in my lifetime, popular language bears witness to black America's search for its identity. But 1964 was about a lot more than semantics.

It is unthinkable, for many, in 2009, when a black man sits in the Oval Office and another black man is the chief law enforcement officer in the nation, to imagine a time when law enforcement officials not only condoned but actively participated in the murders of civil rights workers whose "crime" was helping black citizens register to vote.

In Chaney's hometown of Meridian, the Meridian Star reports on the 45th Annual Mississippi Civil Rights Martyrs Memorial Service and Conference.

It culminated in a March for Justice that honored all those, black and white, who gave their lives in the cause of freedom and justice — but Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner are specifically honored. The event took place on the weekend that marks the anniversary of their murders.

The chairman of the event told the newspaper that the march commemorates the route that Martin Luther King and the other marchers followed on the second anniversary of the killings.

I grew up in neighboring Arkansas, but I was too young at the time to know what was going on in Mississippi. Many years later, I was sitting in a journalism class in college and my reporting professor told the class that he had been one of the reporters assigned to cover King's march in 1966. Some time later, I looked it up on microfilm and confirmed, from seeing his byline, that he reported the event.

He recalled following the marchers through the streets of rural Mississippi, and he vividly described the cold gaze of the white citizens who silently watched every step of King's entourage.

How scary was it in those days? My reporting professor also covered Northern Ireland during the bloodiest of the clashes between Catholics and Protestants, but he said the march in Mississippi was the time in his newspaper career when he was the most frightened for his safety.

I'm glad those three men — and their sacrifices — are remembered in Meridian nearly half a century later. But I honestly wonder if some people realize just how recent, in our national experience, it was. I've been looking at Mississippi newspaper websites today, and I haven't seen anything else about the anniversary of that event.

It seems to be tumbling into the dustbin of history, relegated to a paragraph or two in the history textbooks. I'm glad things have changed, but, as a student of history, I'm a devout believer in the adage that if you don't remember the past, you're doomed to repeat it.

Those murders and others forced the nation to confront an ugly reality that was and still is a problem in all corners of the country but came to be viewed as endemic to the South.

Perhaps that was due, in part, to the high–profile and highly prolific politicians in this region at that time, politicians like George Wallace, Lester Maddox and Orval Faubus. But a lot of it, I believe, was in fact an attitude that was encouraged by state and community leaders and taught by parents for generations.

In his book about the 1964 presidential campaign, Theodore H. White didn't mention the Goodman–Chaney–Schwerner killings, but he wrote about the conditions in Mississippi: "The white community is brutal to its Negroes, brutal beyond its own understanding of what this brutality brings."

White went on to observe that, around 1920, "Mississippi was one of only two states in the Union (the other being South Carolina) with a Negro majority. … But the condition of Mississippi life expelled from the state the best, the most energetic, the most able, the most responsible of the Negroes — the seekers, the yearners, the men of hope."

As a result, White wrote, "White Mississippi has fashioned Black Mississippi by its own hate into what it fears most."

And that hate boiled over when three civil rights workers came to Neshoba County to register black citizens to vote.

Some things have changed in 45 years, but some things have not. One does not need to be in Mississippi today to see hate in America and the world.

Today, we watch the events in Iran and wonder if it will become another Tiananmen Square, and we're not far removed from a fatal shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum that brought some attention, however fleeting, to recent warnings that hate groups across the country are stirred up.

I'm sorry if this spoils your Father's Day, but, honestly, is there a better time to mention it?

We must remember the past if we're going to avoid repeating it.

Assessing the Senate Races

If you're looking for insightful analyses on the races for the presidency, the Senate and the House, you can't go wrong if you consult Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Today, he's provided us with an update on the races for the Senate.

Party control of the Senate, he observes, has changed hands six times since 1980. "This is no longer a rare event."

Sabato has come to the conclusion that "2008 is virtually certain not to generate a seventh such shift."

As I've mentioned before, a big part of the reason is that these senators were elected in 2002. It was the midterm of George W. Bush's first term as president. Normally, midterms go against the party that occupies the White House, but the country was only a year removed from the 9-11 attacks and Bush was pressing for the authority to go to war in Iraq.

So the Republicans won a lot of seats in the Senate. And, as a result, they have twice as many seats to defend as the Democrats do in this election cycle -- when gas prices have risen about 36% in a year, the war is unpopular, and Bush is a lame duck.

All the Democrats are seeking re-election and only one, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, appears to be in a close race. Most observers, Sabato included, believe Democrats will retain at least 11 of their 12 seats.

The Republicans have to defend more than 20 seats, and a handful of their senators are retiring (including Larry Craig of Idaho, Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska).

Due to the death of one senator and the retirement of another who was not scheduled to be up for re-election this year, Republicans have to defend two more seats -- in Wyoming and Mississippi, where the voters will be electing two senators at the same time.

Sabato says Wyoming Republicans should be able to hold both their seats, but the seat formerly held by Trent Lott in Mississippi is currently a tossup.

In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour appointed Rep. Roger Wicker to succeed Lott. Sabato says Wicker has a "50-50 chance" of holding the seat for the Republicans in November.

In assessing the 11 most competitive Senate races this year, Sabato concludes that Democrats will pick up four seats and two seats currently held by Republicans are tossups (Alaska and Lott's old seat in Mississippi). Thus, a six-seat gain is possible for the Democrats.

In Alaska, longtime Sen. Ted Stevens "is mired in a major corporate scandal involving pay-offs and bribery," writes Sabato. But "[h]e has not been indicted and may be able to clear himself."

And, as Sabato observes, "it is too early to call any November election for an Alaska Democrat."

None of the Democratic seats are currently likely to shift to the Republicans, according to Sabato, not even Landrieu's seat.

Louisiana lost a lot of Democratic votes when a large number of blacks had to leave New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Sabato points out, but he concludes that the state is leaning to Landrieu. "This might be a tight race in the end, but it isn't starting that way."

It's not all bad news for Republicans, according to Sabato. They might not be picking up any seats, but there are a few they may be likely to hold, even if it turns out to be a Democratic year.

In Minnesota, the home of Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman "is beatable," Sabato writes, "but it is uncertain whether the new convention-crowned Democratic nominee, comedian Al Franken, can do it.

"Franken has been found to have had a substantial number of overdue tax bills in various states, and some of his off-color satires from past years have not sold well in this more politically correct era."

Franken might still have a struggle on his hands if former Gov. Jesse Ventura opts to run as an independent -- a move he's been mulling lately.

Ventura won't win the Senate seat, Sabato says, "but he's the ultimate wild card."

Yes, Mississippi, You Get to Participate

Mississippi seems to be having the same response a lot of voters in a lot of states have expressed in recent weeks.

They can't believe they have the opportunity to cast a vote in the presidential campaign that actually matters.

I had that feeling in the Texas primary. And, now, apparently, that feeling is being experienced in Mississippi.

"It’s official," says the McComb Enterprise-Journal. "Mississippi is actually going to really matter in a presidential race for the first time in decades -- at least for one of the parties." The paper concedes, in most elections, the state has been "largely an afterthought."

Well, the Democrats aren't treating it as an afterthought in 2008. The Clintons have been campaigning there, and Barack Obama is supposed to campaign there ahead of the primary on Tuesday.

After Tuesday, the public's attention likely won't return to Mississippi until this fall, when one of the presidential debates is scheduled to be held on the Ole Miss campus. The first presidential debate is set for Sept. 26 in Oxford, Miss.

Polls show Obama leading Clinton in Mississippi. More than one-third of the population of Mississippi is black, and, in state after state, Obama has been receiving more than 80% of the black vote. Slightly more than 1% of Mississippians are Hispanic, a group that has supported Clinton.

So, based on the ethnic demographics in Mississippi, it's not surprising that Insider Advantage's most recent survey of Mississippi Democrats found Obama leading Clinton, 46% to 40%. American Research Group reported an even larger margin for Obama in Mississippi, 58% to 34%. Both polls concluded their surveys on Thursday.

Rasmussen Reports wrapped up a poll on Wednesday. Obama led that one as well, 53% to 39%.

It's awkward, to say the least, that Obama now faces the kind of scrutiny from the media to which his opponent already has been subjected for many years. A candidate for president should be examined much earlier in the process.

For example, the New York Times reports that, in three years in the Senate, Obama has shown "star power," but his contribution in the Senate has been seen as a bit of a dim bulb.

"[W[hile he rightly takes credit for steering through an ethics overhaul that reformers called a 'gold standard,' like most freshmen he did not play a significant role in passing much other legislation," write Kate Zernike and Jeff Zeleny in the New York Times, "and disappointed some Democrats for not becoming a more prominent voice in other important debates."

Dick Morris believes the race is over and Obama has won. "The real message of Tuesday’s primaries is not that Hillary won," Morris writes in The Hill. "It’s that she didn’t win by enough. The race is over."

But even though Obama remains the leader in delegates, it's too early, writes David Greenberg on the History News Network, to talk of Clinton's withdrawal from the race.

"Like the calls for Al Gore to concede the presidency ... in November 2000, this anxiety about the imagined consequences of a protracted fight misreads both history and the calendar," writes Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers. "In 2000, pundits seemed not to know that contested elections in previous years -- notably the 1960 race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon -- remained officially unresolved until barely a month before Inauguration Day, and so they talked as if each hour of uncertainty brought the republic nearer to doom."

That didn't happen, of course, and so Mississippi is drawn into the fray long after most states have voted in 2008. On the eve of the Democratic primary, some of Mississippi's newspapers are taking sides. The Greenwood Commonwealth favors Obama.

The Commonwealth says Obama is a "a breath of fresh air, running a campaign that has the potential to unite the country and help it move further beyond the racial scars of our past."

Conventional wisdom has been taking a beating this year, observes Mark Leibovich in the New York Times.

"Who was more dead, Hillary Rodham Clinton a week ago or John McCain six months ago?" Leibovich asks. "Whose nomination was more inevitable, Mrs. Clinton’s six months ago or Barack Obama’s two weeks ago? Both questions are of course moot -- if not ridiculous in retrospect (as fleeting as Rudy’s front-runner status or the media swoon over Fred Thompson)."

I think Obama will win in Mississippi. But I think he's got his work cut out for him in Pennsylvania.

Trent Lott Leaving the Senate

Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott announced today that he will retire by the end of the year.

The announcement caught many people, including yours truly, by surprise. It's not that I think Lott's departure will affect the balance of power in the Senate -- I fully expect the seat to continue to be held by a Republican.

Recently re-elected Republican Gov. Haley Barbour will appoint an interim replacement for Lott. He says he will make that appointment within 10 days of Lott's resignation. A special election will be held next year to determine who will serve out the remainder of Lott's term.

Lott was re-elected last year, so his seat isn't due to go before the voters for a full six-year term again until 2012. Whoever wins next year's special election will be elected to a four-year term.

Speculation in Mississippi is that third district Rep. Chip Pickering, 44, who served as an aide to Lott from 1990 to 1994, is Lott's most likely replacement. Pickering announced earlier this year that he would not seek re-election to the House in 2008, in part because he wanted to be able to spend more time with his family.

But Pickering has been regarded for a long time as Lott's heir apparent, and this opening will probably draw him into the special election race, whether Barbour appoints him as the interim replacement or not.

The third district slithers along the southern portion of Mississippi, touching the western boundary that runs along the Mississippi River and the eastern boundary that borders on Alabama. The voters there have given Pickering around 80% of the vote in the last two congressional elections. The district's population is more heavily white than the rest of the state (more than 63% in the district, compared to a little over 60% statewide), and it is the site of the infamous Neshoba County Fair, which has been mentioned in recent posts on this blog.

Based on the National Journal's ratings, Pickering isn't exactly a Trent Lott clone. But his record is sufficiently conservative to satisfy Lott's supporters. The National Journal rated Lott more conservative on foreign and social issues than on economic issues in 2006 -- although he was rated more conservative on economic issues in 2005.

Pickering's ratings are more moderate on economic issues and more conservative on foreign and social issues.